Monday, March 25, 2013

Las-Stik

In my shop I have a handy but very old 4-drawer metal cabinet with very worn decals on each drawer front:


The decal proclaims: "Ask 'Em To Buy Las-Stik Tube Patch."

The Las-Stik Patch Manufacturing Company was  founded in 1915 by Louis Sohngen in Hamilton, Ohio.  The company name may have originated with the founders initials and/or may have been intended to boost the company's first product, a tire patch that would "last and stick."  (Personally, I think they were aiming for an association with "elastic" since their patches were advertised to stretch with the tube.) Such a product was essential in an age when roads were poor and mined with sharp gravel and old horse-shoe nails, and tires would often get punctured numerous times in the course of a single trip.

Remarkably, the company is still in business out of Dayton, Ohio, having added the "GitUm" brand of automotive wax polishing cloths in the 1950's.

Saturday Evening Post, 1924
Popular Mechanics, May 1923

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